By Judith Woods TELEGRAPH CO UK

A well-dressed woman in her sixties stands in a corridor, weeping behind her designer glasses. By her side is another, younger woman, introspective in her mute misery, eyes cast down. A third woman, office-smart with a neat bob, bearing a name badge with the title Personal Support Unit, is hovering on the fringes.

She ushers the pair into Court Nine, with its long desks and ergonomically designed chairs. They are the only occupants. A court official reads out a list of decree absolutes, ending a dozen or so marriages. As it’s a formality, there is no need for couples – ex-couples – to turn up.

The two women look as if they’d rather be anywhere else. When the judge addresses the younger one, it transpires that she has come to say she is unable to pay her share of the court costs – an administrative fee of £340 – because she has mental health issues.

The judge briskly orders the absent husband to pay costs, and with that the women are dismissed. Both are now crying.

When high-profile cases hit the High Court and the headlines, we are unabashedly agog at the sight of the moneyed and the privileged slugging it out over six-figure monthly maintenance and who gets the chalet in Gstaad. It’s not dignified, but it’s gripping, and the patina of glamour makes it difficult to attribute genuine feelings to the warring couples.

Today, at the Principal Registry of the Family Division in Holborn, central London, there is no sense of high-octane drama, no whiff of glitz. Quite the reverse: an air of hushed gloom hangs over the windowless corridors, officious solicitors purposefully trundling their wheeled suitcases crammed with case notes, their dazed clients traipsing in their wake.

It is here – and in similar buildings the length of the land – that pensions are carved up, houses allocated and, at the extreme end, legal arguments conducted over furniture and family pets. Assets are divided, children’s fates decided. And as their family splits asunder, 3.8 million children find themselves victims of what Family Division Judge Sir Paul Coleridge calls “one of the most destructive scourges of our time”.

A new survey shows – contrary, perhaps, to expectation – that young people regard marriage and the raising of a family to be more worthwhile than a high-flying career or the acquisition of material wealth. Indeed, the research, carried out by care home charity Friends of the Elderly, revealed that a lasting marriage was the leading aspiration among every age group, including 18-24 year-olds.

Earlier this month, when Coleridge established the Marriage Foundation, an independent charity dedicated to championing marriage as the “gold standard for relationships”, Left-wing commentators were highly critical. In return for raising his head above the politically correct parapet to reject the canard that when it comes to bringing up children, cohabitation is the equal of a legal union, bar the paperwork, he was branded reactionary.